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Tuesday, October 29, 2013

D is for Dread - Autism Hour

I am going to be very honest with you. There are days that I dread the hours of 5:30 am to roughly 7 am. This horrible time of day is a black hole of rudeness, inappropriate comments and behavior. Don't get me wrong, I LOVE our kids. But this time of the day pushes both Joe and I to our MAX!!

This nasty, dreaded time of day is when Joey is waking up and his medication has not started working yet. You might think....seriously you medicate your child. You are awful parents!! Well I guarantee that if you were living in our house, you would be using medication right along with the kids at this hour. So don't judge us, if you are not living in our shoes.

In the past Joey has walked out of the house and rode his bike to my brothers house. With us still in bed and not hearing him. This is extremely dangerous behavior. He has gone into our backyard (which fortunately is fenced in) and woke up my parents in their house. He has gone out and just stood barefoot in snow drifts.

So not only is there dangerous, possible injury incidents we have to watch for, but he uses words and phrases we don't even know where he got. If he can't think of something, he will make up something. And attempt to make it as lude as possible. I have been called so many names, that I have started blocking out this most days.

There are constant reminders about appropriate behaviors and how our words hurt feelings. How inappropriate actions might be funny to you, but not funny to others.

The scary part is that he does not always remember what he done while acting this way. The manicky behaviors are very scary. You have heard the phrase that 'the child was so hyper they were bouncing off the walls', well we have actually seen Joey run into the wall repeatedly and bounce back.....just because he could.

Joey wakes up like the Energizer Bunny and always on the go. I think the hardest part, besides watching him not even realize what he is doing, is the fact that half the time Joe and I have not had enough sleep and already feel horrible. So if we cannot function at a high level, it equals less patience for us. It's really, really hard on a daily basis.

You know the only thing that we can do is repeat the same warnings daily about his behavior. Daily find something that allows him to get the sensory input he is craving and distract him from the inappropriate behaviors. And that is the whole point....it is DAILY. Daily reminders on the same behavior. (We really feel like we are living in that movie Groundhog Day.)

Don't get me wrong, I LOVE our kids. But most days I dread that Autism hour. Some days are worse than others. It really makes it hard to make the day better when that morning you most likely was woke up feeling like someone dumped an ice bucket on you. We have lots and lots of prayer for extra patience as we try and get ourselves woke up and our brains functioning at a close speed to what Joey's is already functioning at.

Do any of you out there have an "Autism" hour during the day that you dread? Does your happen first thing in the morning or is it at different times of the day?

2 comments:

I have no autism hour... what I have is the "but I am drawing now mom.. I don't want to do ANYTHING else". (very loudly) And I sigh, and we talk, and we move forward... only to do it again half an hour later....